To Walk on Streets of Gold
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: They come looking for something more, he commented, and she looked at him before saying that they came to see if the streets were really paved with gold only to have it turn into something they never really thought would ever happen to them.


**A/N: SVU's not mine. Another post-ep, this time for Russian Love Poem, otherwise known as episode 12 of season one. **

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They make their way down the boardwalk in mostly silence after his last comment, and then she turns and gives him a sideways look.

"Do you really think they actually come here believing that the streets are paved with gold?" she asks, remembering a comment from a history class long ago, and he looks over at her.

"I think they come here to look for a better life, and I'm hardly one to say that they're not welcome to do so," he says. "I have no problem with people wanting to come and find a better way of life for themselves. What I do have a problem with is people that cause trouble."

"I think they believe that they'll find a lot more than they do, and when they realize that, when it hits them, they figure they need to do whatever it is that'll get them a better life," she says. "It's not always easy when you come here and don't know the culture, the language…anything."

He nods, more in agreement than anything else. "You know what surprises me?" he asks, and she looks over at him.

"What?" she asks.

"The lengths people will go to for love," he replies. "That's what surprises me. He was really gonna kill himself in there, just because she had no feelings whatsoever for him."

"You know, that's not really so unheard of," she remarks, and he looks over at her with raised eyebrows.

"I won't ask what you know about that sort of thing, but I will ask how," he says, and she shrugs.

"You already know I didn't exactly have the greatest childhood," she says. "There was one guy, my freshman year in high school. He was a senior, and…after he graduated, he decided he didn't want anything to do with me, so I showed up on his doorstep when his parents weren't home and told him I'd do it if he didn't talk to me."

He doesn't have to ask her what 'it' is, because he already knows, and it startles him, because it's not exactly something that he'd have thought his partner would have ever done. But apparently, she has, and now she's telling him about it.

"Did he talk to you?" he asks, and she nods.

"Yeah, he talked to me, but that's only because he was afraid I was serious. I thought I was, too, but after we talked, I realized I wouldn't have ever really gone through with it."

"That's good to know," he remarks, and thinks to himself that if anyone ever dares push one of his daughters to that point, they will get a rather hard lesson on exactly what fear is.

"Yeah…" She trails off and then goes on. "To think, this started out with a simple affair gone wrong and turned into something like this."

"Most affairs gone wrong tend to turn into a lot more than they actually look like," he tells her. "This one was just…complicated."

"Everything's complicated nowadays. I'm starting to see why this unit is all volunteer," she mutters. "I don't see how you've managed to stick around for so long."

"I stick around because I like this job, and because I think that certain parts of a relationship shouldn't be twisted so that they're the worst part rather than one of the better parts."

"Way to phrase it. I'm not a kid, you know. You can actually talk to me about this sort of thing."

"Well, I have to practice somewhere. At home, I've got a fifteen-year-old who doesn't care, a twelve-year-old who knows more than she should, and two overly curios six-year-olds."

"Ah, that golden age," she says, and he rolls his eyes.

"You know, I sit and hope that nothing ever gets to the point for them that it did for the people involved in this mess," he remarks. "And then I wonder why the hell I even think it could, and I realize that it's because I'm in this unit."

"Kind of like wondering why people bother to come when they know it's going to be a lot more different than where they came from," she says, and he nods.

"Kind of like that. I just…I want to know what drives people to go to those lengths all for some kind of unrequited love that's never gonna be returned, and at the same time, I don't."

"It scares you, doesn't it?"

"What scares me is that this probably isn't an isolated incident, and that we're going to see it happen over and over again because of what we investigate."

"You can't go into this job with your eyes closed. We all knew that when we came in, and we're all gonna know it when we come out."

"True, but then, you can't just come around here from wherever you come from expecting the one you love to love you back."

"Yeah, and you can't really come around here and expect to walk on streets of gold, either."


End file.
